Research: 2014 Digital Business Survey

Mike Healey12/01/13

The world’s gone digital, and IT needs to step up. It’s not enough to have a great website ­anymore. To be successful, digital must be a fully integrated part of the business, informed by IT as well as marketing and other constituencies. How are you doing? Are apps, websites, social, maybe even the cryptic “Internet of things” part of a comprehensive strategy?

Most of the 510 respondents to our InformationWeek Digital Business Survey, 326 at organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees and 184 at organizations with 1,000 or more employees, have digital on their radar screens. But there are differences:

> While a lack of funds is the #1 reason for not developing a digital strategy among smaller companies, the majority of large companies cite a lack of time.

> 61% of smaller companies to take a holistic approach, believing the Internet and digital technologies impact every aspect of the business and are a core part of organizational strategy, compared with just 42% of large companies.

> 56% of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees have incorporated social networking into their current digital strategies compared with 47% of companies with 1,000 or more ­employees.

> Both smaller and large companies identify competing demands as the top challenge to managing and implementing digital strategy.

> Nearly half of large companies have either switched all of their websites to responsive ­design (18%) or have created specialty sites for mobile devices (28%). These changes are largely on the horizon for smaller companies.

Respondent breakdown: 36% have 1,000 or more employees; 15% are over 10,000. ­Government, consulting and business services, education, and financial services are well ­represented, and 38% are IT director/manager or IT executive management (C-level/VP) level. (R7560114)

Survey Name InformationWeek Digital Business Survey

Survey Date November 2013

Region North America

Number of Respondents 510; 326 respondents at organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees and 184 at organizations with 1,000 or more employees

Purpose To examine how thoroughly companies are embracing the changes brought by the web, mobile devices, cloud computing and social networking.

Methodology InformationWeek surveyed business technology decision-makers at North American companies. The survey was conducted online, and respondents were ¬recruited via an email invitation containing an embedded link to the survey. The email ¬invitation was sent to qualified InformationWeek subscribers.